


At the Grotto

by writerdragonfly



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety & Related Mental Health Issues, Gen, M/M, Major Character Death applies to first timeline only, Parent Cor Leonis, Post-Canon, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 17:46:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18238202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: “And at the grotto of life and death, a god heard a mournful cry and answered it.” Ignis Scientia dies to live another day, a long time ago.





	At the Grotto

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying an experiment where I stop overthinking every word I write and just post as soon as I get a feel for a good stopping point. I have been so stressed out about my writing lately that I haven't posted anything in some time. I have several other fics for this fandom in the works, but this was the first I started so it's the first to receive JUST POST IT treatment.
> 
> Anyway, please enjoy some very self-indulgent Ignis travels to the past fic. Featuring Dad!Cor because I have read most of them and need more. 
> 
> The tagged Major Character Death is for canon deaths only. None of the tagged characters will have a New Timeline Death because I am a baby.

 

one:

  
  


**Ignis**

  
  


It starts with the exhaustion; bone deep and weighing like a thick, wet coat over his shoulders. 

 

The King is dead, slumped over on the throne. Gladio says he looks peaceful, finally. 

 

He doesn’t doubt that. 

 

Daylight has broken over the city; he cannot see it but he can feel the warmth of it, the beginnings of the first sunburn in a decade across the bridge of his nose. 

 

He’s so tired. 

 

There’s a sharp pain tugging in his stomach, for the first time in ages it isn’t hunger. 

 

He hopes his uniform is hiding the blood. It won’t be long now. 

 

Thirty two years. Three decades he had faith that Noctis would be the best king, the best man he would ever know. 

 

He was, even when his faith was difficult to maintain during the past ten years, Noctis was. 

 

And now Noctis was dead. 

 

Ignis never wanted to outlive his king. 

 

At least, he thinks, blearily, he didn’t outlive him long. 

  
  
  
  


It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he thinks

a voice, soft in his ears. 

“You were chosen as surely as your king,”

like a whisper on the wind

“fate has already done its duty.”

a pause, brief and restless

“Do not let the past control your futures.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


...

  
  
  
  


...

  
  
  


The time between moments feels an immeasurable distance and nothing in the same turn. Like snapping of fingers and an endless night. 

 

Ignis Scientia opens his eyes two beats after he dies on the marble floor of the destroyed throne room, bathed in light. 

 

He sees color, bright and vibrant, for the first time in a decade. Light, bright and true. 

 

His feet find purchase on the brakes of the Regalia, his hand snapping to the side to throw it into park before he’s vomiting, a long ago breakfast splattering against the dusty pavement and down the outside of the door. 

 

He barely manages to get out of the car before it hits again, heaving long after he’s expelled everything in his stomach. 

 

Faintly, he can hear his companions— _ all three of them, Noctis included— _ but the words are muffled by the ringing in his ears and the realization that he is alive, he can see,  _ Noctis  _ is alive. 

 

He would think it nothing more than a vision of the future from the Astrals, except for the weight it carried. It was  _ too  _ real to be anything other than a truth; it was too real to be anything but the past. 

 

“Shit, why are you bleeding?”

 

Was he? Yes, he was. His side, the fatal wound. The heated blade, pressed three inches into the soft flesh above his hip. The elixir that stopped working the moment Noct had taken his last breath, stuttering to half close the gaping wound. 

 

The internal bleeding was likely much worse. 

 

He tried to answer, to explain even though he didn’t truly know himself how he woke to the bright, colorful sky. 

 

No words came, just a press of darkness once more. 

 

At least he understood darkness. 

  
  
  


_ Breathe, child. _

 

_ This is not your epilogue.  _

 

_ This is not your ending.  _

  
  
  


He wakes again sometime later. Some immeasurable time he cannot quantify from what he knows. He’s in a camper, splayed across the bed they usually reserved for Noctis. The sheets under him are rough, but faintly damp. 

 

Dried blood and sweat, he thinks, cataloging as much knowledge as he can manage. 

 

His own. 

 

He’s been stripped down to his underclothes, his undershirt rolled up nearly halfway up his chest. A white bandage was wrapped around his stomach, the material thicker around the side. 

 

The details are hard to see without his glasses, but the faint haze of traditional pain medication makes groping around for them impossible. 

 

He can still see, though. Campers like this haven’t been viable in years, so it hadn’t been some hazy twisted dream to suddenly be thrown back to that soft, simple time between the treaty and the fall. 

 

It was real. 

 

He just didn’t understand how. 

 

He let himself fall back under the thick weight of sleep though, the outlines of his friends fuzzy in his mind. 

 

...

  
  


“He should be stable enough to take the potion now,” a somewhat familiar voice was saying, but it took more than a few breaths to manage to open his eyes. 

 

The wound burned, pain radiating outward like he was on fire. 

 

But he could see, he was alive. 

 

The details of her face were fuzzy, his glasses still gone but Ignis wasn’t sure he’d be able to place her by face alone even if he could see the details up close. Too much time had passed for that. 

 

Her voice though, he knew that. Not as well as others, but well enough. 

 

Monica Elshett had been important to a lot of lives for a long time. 

 

He didn’t understand why she was here now. Not with the battle that was to come in Insomnia. 

 

“Scientia, you’re awake.” She states it, matter of fact. It’s accurate at least. 

 

He wants to respond, but the pain suddenly starbursts out, radiating through to his very bones. 

 

“Holy buggering astrals,” Elshett swears as Noctis pushes past her to smash an elixir against a freshly unwrapped wound. 

 

It’s nearly too cool as the liquid spills across his flesh, biting down into the skin until the edge of pain begins to seep away. 

 

He thinks that Elshett’s swear was because of his scream, but as the icy balm cools his finally healing fatal wound, he realizes what it was. 

 

Spreading across his stomach is the Mark of the Infernian, the sign of a pact formed with an Astral Ignis only had the pleasure of being privy to killing. 

 

“Your Highness, get your Shield to secure this site immediately,” she says, and there’s a panic in her voice that Ignis hadn’t truly heard in ages. “Fuck, where’s my phone?”

 

Noctis hesitates, but when he meets Ignis’ eyes, Ignis nods immediately. Noctis presses his glasses into his hand and leaves without another word. 

 

His vision comes into perfect, sharp view as Monica Elshett unlocks her phone with trembling fingers. 

 

“Marshall,” Elshett says as soon as the call connects, lifting her face to meet Ignis’ eyes. 

 

“Scientia has been Marked by the Infernian.”

  
  
  
  
  


...

  
  


...

  
  


-;-;-;-;-;-

  
  


**Gladio**

  
  


He has known Ignis nearly as long as he’s known Noctis, but never once has he seen the other man lose it. 

 

It makes the sudden stop all the more worrying. 

 

For a half second, he expects Ignis to yell at Noctis for his complaining. But then Ignis is spilling out of the Regalia, suddenly choking on his own vomit in one of the most confusing moments he’s ever experienced. 

 

He’s gone pale, his skin nearly translucent, as if he hasn’t seen the sun in weeks or food in nearly as long. 

 

The other man is barely holding himself up from a crouch in the dust and dirt, his body trembling with the force of his heavy breathing. Gladio makes it to his side just as Noctis is helping him up at the other. 

 

Gladio’s hand comes away thick with blood, sticky and thick. 

 

“Shit,” Gladio gasps out before he can censor himself, “why are you bleeding?”

 

Whatever response Iggy tries to give is lost in a gargle, blood splattering from the man’s lips as he loses consciousness entirely. 

 

They barely manage to catch the rest of him in time. 

 

Prompto pulls out a thick quilt, laying it out on the ground behind the Regalia without a damn care. Gladio sees the first aid kit come out next, obviously understanding expectations. 

 

Gladio and Noct manage to get Ignis over to the makeshift floor without discussion, Noct already peeling Iggy’s jacket off his limp body before anything else can be done. 

 

“Where’s the wound?” The prince asks as they shift through blood soaked clothes that contain  _ no  _ holes. 

 

And then Gladio finally gets to the bare skin taut around the muscles of Ignis’ stomach. 

 

A thick, deep wound sluggishly bleeding. The edges were cut clean, as if a blade had sliced him open. It was inflamed, but there was the faint trace of healing magic laid over the skin. 

 

_ Noctis _ ’ healing magic, which left his highness only a puzzled shared look between them as they worked. 

 

Prompto cleans the would with a soft, damp towel as Noctis pulls away with his phone already halfway to his ear. With the lingering magic, it would be too dangerous to apply a potion or an elixir, even though Gladio aches to do it. 

 

Instead he does his job as a battlefield medic alongside Prompto, sealing the edges of a deadly wound together as best they can. They wrap him in bandages, working silently as Noctis calls first for a tow despite their initial attempt at making it to Hammerhead on their own, and then to the emergency line of the Crownsguard. 

 

Whatever happened to Ignis, impossible as it was, was more than they could handle and much too soon. 

 

“He’s going to be okay,” Gladio almost misses Prompto’s words, but the somehow heavy hand on his shoulder pulls him back to Eos, “Ignis is strong.”

 

Gladio doesn’t know when he became the weak one of their party, but somehow he doesn’t mind the assurance. 

 

Ignis doesn’t wake. 

 

...

 

...

 

It’s a well built blonde wearing a yellow leather jacket that does nothing to protect the more sensitive areas of her chest, let alone her mostly bare expanse of torso and thighs, that shows up with a tow truck. She’s peppy in a way that reminds him of Prompto, who only flushes for a minute when he catches sight of her. Gladio thinks in better circumstances, Prompto would have kept staring or perhaps stayed that shade of red longer. But, as nice as she is to look at, Ignis is their primary concern. 

 

For a beat, she seems to want to tease Noctis about his impending nuptials, but as soon as she sees Ignis, laid out behind the car because of necessity, she tightens up like a newly coiled spring. 

 

“This why you called for the tow, ain’t it?” She says, but she doesn’t wait for an answer. She slips one glove off to reveal calloused and scarred skin, but quickly slips it into a slim pocket at her hip. 

 

“You give him anything for the pain yet, boys?” She asks, lifting her bare fingers to reveal a slim packet.  _ Pain Balm _ is clearly written along the length of it. 

 

“How much—“ Noctis is asking before the rest of them can form the idea, but she’s shaking her head. 

 

“Ain’t no charge to lessen someone’s pain. I can always resupply.”

 

There are good people in the world, even outside the walls of Insomnia. If Gladio had needed a reminder, Cindy Aurum would have proven it. 

 

...

 

They move Ignis with careful hands, settling him into the front passenger’s seat of the Regalia and dropping the back of it down so he can lay as flatly as possible. The ride to Hammerhead seems achingly slow, and Gladio is terribly aware that Ignis’s condition is the cause of it. Whether Cindy is driving slower to avoid any sudden movement in the back of the car or because he’s much too worried to think coherently, Gladio isn’t sure. 

 

It’s probably both. 

 

By the time they reach Hammerhead, Gladio feels like his chest has been squeezed out of his chest, wrung out like an orange fresh from breakfast. When did  _ Ignis _ start meaning this much to him?

 

Why did he.

 

Cid Sophiar cracks a joke before he sees Ignis’ state, and Gladio isn’t ashamed to admit to himself that he relishes the look on the old man’s face when he realizes why the Prince had gone back on his promise of making it to Hammerhead on their own. 

 

They don’t really have gil to their names, what little they’d been given before they left probably went much further twenty years ago, and they hadn’t needed to worry about it back home.

 

There’s a part of Gladio that thinks things are only going to get worse from here, a thick weight in his gut that reminds him of things he’d rather forget. 

 

“I’d do the same for any unlucky kid who stumbled up on ‘ere injured,” Sophiar is saying, handing a handful of gil over to Noctis, “It should be enough to pay for the caravan for the day, and I’ll have Takka prepare a meal for the rest of yous.”

 

Gladio shares a look with Prompto, and then they move to pick Ignis up again.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this, feel free to leave me a comment or check out my other fics. <3


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